He grinned. “Well, I reckon you’ll love this place as much as I do, eventually. But I thought we should start with something fun—before we get to chores.”
I sat up and rubbed my hands together.
“Okay, husband,” I said and asked, “What are we gonna do?”
He put on his boots, which he’d kept off to keep the noise down. “I’m taking you to a special place—you’re going to love it. But it’s at least six miles upstream so put on your best footwear.”
I beamed. “You got yourself a date!”
Soon we were walking upstream, following the creek as it warmed to the first rays of the sun sneaking over the canyon rim. Jim carried the picnic basket in one hand, and his rifle—a .44 caliber Spencer carbine—in the other. I wore a canvas backpack with a warm blanket stuffed inside. Into my hair I had woven the blue ribbon.
The leaves were filling out, growing bigger, and into darker shades of green, and with each day the skeletal trunks and branches of the cottonwoods and alders along the creek retreated into the shadows. With them, hovering, was the last vestige of winter—that frigid coolness that has no recollection of summer.
But the snowmelt was over—even up on the rim—and now the murmuring creek had no urgency to it. It meandered again.
For much of the way we walked up the middle of the creek, hopping over low, flooded sections without getting wet, but when we needed to avoid the water, there was always a trail along one bank or another.
Jim said, “Over the last few years, I’ve marveled at some of these trails created by the ancients. I imagine they used them for eons—long before the Apache arrived—even now, long after their absence, there’s still a path.”
We moved slowly, enjoying the morning, and Jim didn’t act surprised at all when we came across a few mule deer foraging. There were five of them. All does. Two were young, born that year and only a few months old.
“Aren’t they precious?” I asked.
Jim nodded, happily. “I see a few does most every time I walk this stretch. They seem to love it here. And I’ve yet to figure out why they aren’t afraid of people.”
The deer hopped ahead of us, in no rush, white tails flagging.
Suddenly, I locked eyes on the rifle.
“Jim?” I asked, hesitantly, “Are you aimin’ to kill one of those beautiful creatures today?”
He glanced at the largest doe walking directly in front of them. “No, darlin’” he said, “but it wouldn’t hurt to hunt something if the opportunity arises.”
I bit my tongue as we walked along over smooth worn stretches of sandstone, and through patches of lush green grass. Jim shadowed me, knowing I was unsettled, anxious to not let anything spoil our day.
The trail was lined with vegetation, briars and berry vines that climbed over everything, stretching heavenward, desperate to break the grip of the dead white husks of last year’s crop.
A woodpecker banged on a dead trunk around the next bend.
Finally, I asked, “Do you think you could leave them alone? The friendly does along this stretch?”
He sighed, eager to please me. “Of course,” he said, “anything for you. I’ll keep my gun pointed elsewhere.”
I snuggled against him as we continued.
By the time we arrived at the gentle lagoon, we had not seen the deer for a while. But sure enough, there were several of them grazing just beyond the standing stone with a moss-covered petroglyph on it.
The wind whistled through the pines above us, building and swaying, until suddenly it was no more, replaced by the twirling and chattering of a thousand birds.
Cool, clear sunlight bathed the rippling water. Beneath the surface, trout swirled, suddenly snapping upstream or down whenever whim suggested.
A family of quail pecked their way to the water’s edge. The chicks looked like little puffballs on legs.
I smiled. “This is wonderful,” I said as I inhaled the lovely fresh air.
My gaze swept over the setting and settled on the large flat rock in the middle of the clearing. I walked that way, but found my path obstructed by myriad piles of stones that hid in the dead grass.
“They’re everywhere,” I said.
“Just do your best,” said Jim, as he picked his own way to the water’s edge.
I got there first, hopped to the rock and laid down our blanket. Jim joined me, and we set to eating the picnic he’d prepared.
As a special surprise, he’d brought along a small rhubarb pie.
“I still had some stores in the root cellar,” he said.
I shook my head, happily. “I don’t know when you found the time to do all that.”
After we ate, we took a nap, and when we woke again, we undressed and made love on the flat rock.
Our only witnesses were the does nibbling fresh shoots nearby.
“I could just stay here all day,” I exclaimed, as I stretched luxuriantly in the sunshine. We were partially dressed—just our skivvies—on the blanket, lying on our backs again.
Side-by-side, we watched the ever-blue sky.
Eventually we got dressed, but neither felt compelled to get up.
“I remembered watching clouds with you on the bank of the Colorado,” said Jim.
He looked up and saw one lone cloud floating by.
“I reckon that’s a ship,” he said.
“Nope,” I giggled, “that’s a duck.”
We remained in that peaceful place for a small eternity. Neither of us kept track of time, until Jim began thinking about dinner.
“You know,” he said, “I could head upstream and see if there’s any game about, and you could wait here.”
“You gonna be gone long?” I asked.
“Couple hours,” he said, and I nodded.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, as he left, heading north, upstream, carrying his gun and the empty backpack.
After an hour Thompson jumped a deer, and even managed to get off a quick shot. He got lucky, and when he hurried to where the buck had been standing, he found blood splattered on the ground.
A lot of it.
He didn’t think the animal could make it far, and he began following the bloody spoor.
But the deer was stronger than he had anticipated and somehow made it a good way up onto the plateau. It finally collapsed on the other side of a slippery boulder field. When Thompson caught up with it, his heart sank. He didn’t think he could carry the carcass out of here.
So instead, he butchered it where it had dropped, stuffing the pelt and the best cuts into his backpack.
He was so preoccupied with his task that it was already growing dark when he finally looked up, and on the far end of the valley a full moon was peaking at him from the horizon.
Quickly, he shouldered his pack and hurried downstream.
When Jim left me, I hadn’t a care in the world. The magical place he’d brought me to seemed so nice, so perfect, that I was happy to stay behind.
I lay there listening to the birds, and the trickling water, and before long fell asleep to this symphony.
My second nap that day!
When I awoke, it was dark. The silence disturbed me.
The crickets had not yet woken from their winter slumber, and the birds had settled for the night.
I put my boots back on and wrapped the blanket around me.
I kept glancing upstream but saw no sign of my husband.
“Jim!” I called out, my thin voice barely penetrating the night.
And then the full moon slid over the rim of the canyon and shone down on me. It lit the lagoon, and the forest clustered around it, and bathed everything in silver.
I felt like I was in a dream.
And then I heard singing.
It came from downstream, the melody floating over the water.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
Suddenly my only concern was to get closer to the song.
I dropped the blanket and walked toward the so
ng, all thoughts of my husband and the eerie canyon night forgotten.
I simply followed the melody down the canyon.
When I passed the West Fork, I deemed that the source must be here, and I turned in that direction. I seemed to be floating along, like a leaf on a river.
Thompson reached the lagoon covered in sweat. The calm night should have helped him stay cool, but in his panic all it did was chill him. He’d expected to see Margaret waiting on the rock but found only the blanket and the remnants of their picnic.
Something was wrong.
He set down the backpack.
Her boot prints stood out clearly in the mud along the creek, and he followed them with rifle in hand. At first, he had hoped something had prompted her to return to their little cabin, but when he saw her tracks turn up the West Fork, a cold chill ran down his spine.
Why would she go in there?
After a few miles the hard sandstone prevented all prints. He’d never ventured into this canyon and didn’t like the way its walls closed in on him.
He was about to turn back when he found a blue ribbon lying in the dirt.
He kept going. His heart pounded.
Moonlight lit the way, and he felt compelled to follow it further.
Out of the silver glow, a thunderous roar echoed through the canyons. Thompson´s blood froze. He couldn´t tell if it came from man or beast. It was different from anything he’d ever heard. If it hadn’t been for Margaret, he would have fled there and then.
The sky darkened, eclipsing the moon, and suddenly it began to hail. A layer of cold mist floated above the ground.
Within a minute it was over, and the silence in the wake of the pounding hail felt unnatural.
Ghoulish white pellets now covered the canyon floor.
Thompson came to a long, confined section where the walls closed to within twenty feet of each other. From the shadows at the other end, he could hear something moving his way.
The clouds blew away, and the moonlight returned.
Something big was ahead. Running. Panting. Snapping dead twigs with its thundering steps. He stopped and held his breath, trying to hear better. Could this be the wind thrashing about dead limbs? Could that sound be natural?
A large crash resounded through the canyon ahead, echoing.
He hastily unslung his rifle and put a bullet in the chamber, leaving six more in reserve. It was getting closer now, whatever it was, and he could hear it breathing as it lumbered toward him in the eerie moonlit evening.
And then, from sixty feet away, he saw an enormous grizzly.
The bear didn’t see him yet. He watched it breathlessly through the sight of his gun. The beast was silver in the moon’s glow, and as it closed on him he could see a long scar on its snout. Its hoary pelt didn’t seem of this earth.
And then the bear sighted him.
It roared and shook its head. Then it charged, closing the distance quickly. Thompson aimed for the heart and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet hit high in the bear´s shoulder and threw the beast to the side. It bellowed in pain but didn’t slow.
This is the end, Thompson thought.
The bear smashed into him and launched him into the wall of the canyon. Then it kept going, charging past him with a limp until it rounded a curve and disappeared.
For one moment, he was washed over by a wave of relief, and then he thought of Margaret.
What if she hadn’t come up here at all, but had turned back to the lagoon, or the confluence of the West Fork?
Then the wounded, angry bear would be heading right for her.
“Margaret!” he screamed. He turned and ran after the bear.
It was late in the evening by the time he made it back to the lagoon. He glanced around. No sign of Margaret. He was about to anxiously return to their cabin when he saw the bear again.
It was moving through the high grass on the other side of the clearing. It was limping heavily, and it growled low, in pain.
Thompson inched closer, trying to get a clear shot. A large log blocked his way, and he ducked low to crawl under it. When he came up on the other side the bear was gone.
He spun in a circle, checking the clearing through his sights.
And then the bear was before him.
He tried to raise his rifle and get a shot off, but the bear’s paw swiped down and knocked him into a tree.
He crumpled there, and the world went black.
When he awoke the sun was streaming down through the forest canopy. At first, he didn’t have a clue where he was, but the pain brought things back in focus.
His arm was bruised and tender where he’d been struck by the bear, but he didn’t think it was broken. His head was caked with blood—he must have slammed it into the tree.
When he stood, it was on shaky legs. He scanned the clearing and finally exhaled when he saw there was no sign of the bear.
He looked at the rock in the middle of the lagoon and suddenly his heart stopped. There, lying on the rock, was his wife.
“Margaret!” he screamed and ran to her.
She was unconscious; her clothes were filthy, torn, and covered with mud. He tried to lift her, and she winced. Her left shoulder was bleeding. As she slowly opened her eyes, relief flooded over him.
“I’m gonna get you home,” he said as he helped her to her feet.
They limped along slowly, her arms around his neck. On the way back, Thompson didn’t dare mention what he had seen, and Margaret didn’t offer a word either.
Chapter Forty-two
It took Howard a month to get to Flagstaff. Being a bent old man of sixty-three, he didn’t think the sheriff would waste a posse trying to track him down, but he may have printed “wanted” posters, so he thought it best to lay low and avoid towns.
He had found some dried meat in Shadow´s saddle bags—along with a flint and a small Carborundum stone for sharpening his knife—and between that and Mattie´s pie he went for a while without worrying about food. Mattie had also strapped his rifle and a Colt pistol to the saddle and had packed ammunition for both.
He travelled slowly through the Transverse ranges, following ancient, well-worn trails up and into the San Gabriel Mountains. Shadow seemed to sense his mood and plodded along without complaint until they reached the desert.
Following a very short springtime, summer had descended upon the Mojave Desert that year with an excruciating heat. The harsh sunlight seemed to penetrate to the farthest reaches of his mind, engaging his very soul to confront his guilt over the killing of the sheepherder.
He wondered if the man had a family. In the newspaper, he’d read his name: Ydeliomen Ustaun.
That’s a strange name if I ever heard one, he thought.
His memory of the afternoon was vague, and as angry as he’d been over the way the sheepherders were encroaching on his land, he never wanted to kill the man. It was that damn nightmare that confused everything.
Nancy might have helped him reconcile it in his mind, but she was gone.
“Didn’t even mean to do it,” he said out loud.
But the cruel sun wouldn’t leave him alone, and he rode on, head bent, arms limp, while his mind was chanting the man´s name, over and over: Ydeliomen… Ydeliomen… Ydeliomen…
His lower back started to ache. The slug from the gunshot in the Mexican-American war was still lodged there. Shot in the back, he thought sadly. The Joshua trees offered no shade, and it seemed he was always riding straight into the hot wind.
The rising sun burned in his eyes as he started east each morning. But he had to be on the lookout for rattlers—Mojave Greens—who possessed the deadliest venom in the southwest.
A couple afternoons ago, he had almost been thrown off his horse when Shadow reared up in the face of agitated snake with its rattle vibrating wildly. But he managed to stay in the saddle and back her away.
“There, there,” he said to the horse to calm her down, stroking her neck.
When the
y were clear of the snake, he hopped down and inspected her feet to make sure she hadn´t got bit. His heart ached when he thought of Mattie, and how much she loved the horse she’d given him to escape.
“Those guys get grumpy when bothered,” he told Shadow, “let’s try to give ‘em a wider berth.”
They continued. A ghost on a tumbleweed, blowing east.
He barely remembered using the Whipple Trail, although later figured he must have. Or the climb up onto the Colorado Plateau. He arrived in Flagstaff dust-covered, with a sunburned face and bloodshot eyes.
The town was booming with the anticipated arrival of the Atlantic and Pacific railroads. Men were busy bricking up a new Brennan merchant building, some were leveling the proposed path of the tracks through town, and still others were working in a new lumber mill that had been tasked with producing railroad ties.
Howard disliked the commotion. It reminded him of the gold rush in forty-nine: too many desperate men hoping that fast money would fix all their problems.
He thought of his old friend, Willie.
At the Brennan building, he talked to the foreman, a guy named Lockett, about employment. He hadn’t spoken for so long that his voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Hello,” he said, taking off his hat. He cleared his throat. “I need a job.”
Lockett sized him up. “Well, you’re big enough, but aren’t you a tad old to be swinging a sledge?”
Howard still swaggered in the desert heat—sun-bitten. He wanted to tell the man he was stronger than most of the men he’d known, but he couldn’t find the words.
Lockett noticed Howard´s rifle.
“There’re a lot of hungry men here,” Lockett said, “I’d suggest hunting. Bring me some meat and I’ll pay cash for it.”
“I’ll do that,” said Howard, nodding, but in his mind, he saw Willie’s mangled body in the bear’s den.
Lockett stuck out his hand and introduced himself, and Howard almost gave the man his real name.
“Howard,” he said, then after a pause he added, “Charley Smith Howard.”
The Sirens of Oak Creek Page 21